UNIVERSITITEKNOLOGI MARA

DEVELOPMENT OF A PROTOTYPE OF WEB BASED CAR RENTAL SYSTEM

USING DATA MATCHING TECHNIQUE

FARIZA BINTIHAMZAN 2004107903

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for Bachelor of Science (Hons) Information Technology

Faculty of Information Technology And Quantitative Science

SUPERVISOR'S APPROVAL

NAME : En. Ali bin Seman

SIGNATURE

DATE

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

UNIVERSITITEKNOLOGI MARA

DEVELOPMENT OF A PROTOTYPE OF WEB BASED CAR RENTAL SYSTEM

USING DATA MATCHING TECHNIQUE

FARIZA BINTIHAMZAN 2004107903

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for Bachelor of Science (Hons) Information Technology

Faculty of Information Technology And Quantitative Science

December 2006

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the work in this thesis is my own work and ideas except for

quotations and summaries from other's woric which have been appropriately

acknowledge.

December 2006 Fariza binti Hamzan

2004107903

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Alhamdulillah, in the name of Allah the All Mighty, for giving me patience, strength

and abiUty to complete this thesis.

First and foremost, 1 would like to thank to Pn. Shuzlina binti Abd. Rahman

for her guides on how to do this thesis. A deep thanks to my supervisor En Ali bin

Seman for his supervision, assistance, idea, and patience in supporting my thesis

from proposal up to the completion of this project. Thanks to him for giving me the

opportunity to work under his supervision.

I would like to address special appreciation to my beloved family, seniors and

friends for their love, care, pray and support that gave me strength to study.

Last but not least, my sincere gratitude extends to all individuals who have

contributed either' directly or indirectly in ensuring the success of this thesis.

Thank you.

Ill

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Content Page

DECLARATION ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

ABSTRACT viii

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Background of the Project 2

1.3 Project Problem 2

1.4 Proj ect Obj ecti ves 3

1.5 Project Scope 3

1.6 Project Significance 4

1.7 Conclusion 5

CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction 6

2.2 Web Based System 6

2.3 Data Matching Technique 8

IV

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

Content Page

2.4 Car Rental Industry 11

2.5 Conclusion 12

CHAPTER 3 - RESEARCH APPROACHES AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction 13

3.2 Knowledge Acquisition 15

3.3 Design 15

3.3.1 Interface Design 15

3.3.2 Database Design 16

3.3.2.1 ER Diagram 16

3.3.2.2 Data Dictionary 18

3.3.3 System Architecture 20

3.4 Implementation 22

3.4.1 Setting up Development Environment 22

3.4.2 Data Source Development 22

3.4.3 Engine Development 23

3.4.3.1 Data Matching 23

3.4.4 Hardware and Software 25

3.5 Testing 25

3.5.1 Result Analysis 26

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

Content Page

3.6 Documentation 26

3.7 Conclusion 26

CHAPTER 4 - RESULTS AND FINDINGS

4.1 Introduction 28

4.2 Result and Findings 28

4.2.1 Reservation Flow 29

4.2.1.1 Reservation Instruction 29

4.2.1.2 Data Matching 31

4.2.1.3 Reservation Form 43

4.2.2 Search Reservation 45

4.2.3 Search Car 46

4.2.4 Payment 47

4.2.5 Search 49

CHAPTER 5 - RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION

5.1 Introduction 50

5.2 Conclusion 50

5.3 Recommendation 51

VI

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

Content Page

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

Gantt Chart

Vl l

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, there are online car reservations which give much benefit to user. The

existing of this online system, can. overcome the problem of availability and provide

convenience to. the user in renting, car. Yet users still need more convoiiaice system

such as helping them in recommending car to be rent based on dieir specific

requirements. Data matching technique is appUed to the system to fulfiU their needs.

The system will match the data entered by users to advice or recommend car to be

rented. The data includes the user budget, number of passenger and distance.

However, user may choose either to accept the recommendation or they can view the

car catalogue provided by tlie system to choose by tiieir own. Tliey can select their

preferred car fi-om the car catalogue. Reservation can be done through online and

users have to come to the service center to make payment and pick the reserved car.

This system is fimctioned in retrieving, creating, updating and deleting the data or

information depends on the security level and allows the organization to search user

information fi-om the database based on their identification card number. Besides

that, this system may produce reports such as payment receipt, renting information

and statistics of car renting by year, month, or week. The finding of this project is

the web-based car rental system with recommended car to be rent and the output that

will produce the information by following the user requirements. In conclusion, the

system may need some enhancement and improvement in the fixture.

Vlll

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Web-based applications are distributed systems that can be accessed using a Web

browser. During recent years the extent and scope of their use has grown rapidly,

significantly affecting all aspects of our lives. Industries such as manufacturing,

travel and hospitality, banking, education, and government are Web-enabled to

improve and enhance their operations. E-commerce has expanded quickly,

cutting across national boundaries. Even traditional legacy systems have

migrated to the Web. The scope and complexity of current Web applications

varies widely: from small-scale, short-lived services to large-scale enterprise

applications distributed across the Internet and corporate intranets and extranets.

Although numerous Web-based systems are in use now and many of us

rely on them, the manner in which they are developed raises serious concerns.

They need to be reliable and perform well. To build such systems. Web-based

system developers need a sound methodology, a disciplined process and a set of

good guidelines. Due to the high amount of new demands, Web applications are

evolving continually and the complexity of these systems is increasing rapidly.

Therefore the use of a rigorous method becomes more important.

For businesses in the car rental industry, advances in technology create

great opportunities. Increasingly cost-effective, reliable technologies for voice

and data exchange drive the growth of web-based sales channels and IP-based

call centers, enabling travelers to rent vehicles anytime and from virtually

anywhere. Yet at the same time, cost and competition create significant

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

challenges. Escalating fleet maintenance costs and declining residual values,

combined with growing competition, cut profit margins increasingly thin. For car

rental companies, controlling costs and optimizing efficiencies while leveraging

technology to meet customer demands are the keys to competitive advantage.

1.2 The Background of The Project

The existence of car rental services has overcome the problems of transportation

services. For those who unable to buy their own car or vehicle, car rent services

give many benefits for them to travel for any purposes. With advanced in

technology, it creates great opportunities to implement web-based car rental

system which improves and enhances the car rental service operations. Data

matching technique applied in this web-based car rental system helps users to

select the suitable car to rent based on the important requirements. Besides that,

web-based system increases the eflFectiveness and efficiency of the car rental

service organization in order to run their business operations and management.

13 Project Problem

The manual car rental system provides services only during office hour. So,

customers have limited time to make any transactions or reservation of the cars.

The existence of the online car rental systems nowadays has overcome the

limitation of the business operation hour. However, there is still a few number of

these online car rental systems in Malaysia and most of the systems offered

reservation service for tourists or traveler. Besides that, there are some customers

who faced a problem in choosing car to be rented which suitable with some of

the important requirements.

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

1.4 Project Objective

The project objective is to develop a Prototype of Web-based Car Rental System

using data matching technique.

1.5 Project Scope

The project is developed for ZAZ Rent-A-Car SdiL Bhd. in Shah Alaia The

users of this application are customers who want to rent car, and the ZAZ Rent-

A-Car staffs. The system has a few functions which stated as below

1. Able to recommend car to be rented by the users based on the three

requirements wliich are budget, number of passenger(s) and distance.

2. Provide car catalog for users as an alternative for them to select car if

they want to choose car by their OWIL

3. Functioned in adding, deleting, updating and searching the data or

information depends on the security level.

4. Allows the organization to se^ch user information from the database

based on the user's identification card number.

5. Provide security access level of the system which is organization,

supervisor and clerk.

Administrator - allowed accessing all functions in the system.

Supervisor - allowed accessing all functions in the system except User

menu and Delete Customer menu.

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

Clerk - allowed accessing only Search menu and Payment menu.

6. Produce reports of payment receipt, renting information and car

reservation information.

7. This system provides rent services for National Car only.

1.6 Project Significance

Here are some of significances of the project:

1. Solving the existing problem of the car rental services that is done

manually.

2. Recommending car to the users to help them select car to be rented based

on the important requirements that suitable for them.

3. The organization can search and update the information included in the

system fast and easy.

4. The organization may get the intended reports provided in the system.

5. The system has password protection to keep the data always secured.

6. The system can be relieved in any computer because the system is

reachable via Local Area Network (LAN) or Internet.

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

1.7 Conclusion

This web-based car rental system is developed to be an interactive web-based

environment for car rental services that intended to overcome the problems faced

by users and car rental service organizations. On users' side, ZAZ Rent-A-Car

provides car recommendation service to help users to choose the suitable car for

them to rent based on their budget, the number of passenger, and their journey

distance. Besides that, users may view the car catalogue provided in this system.

While for the organization side, ZAZ Rent-A-Car able to produce report of

reservation made by the users and also prints the receipt as the payment proves.

To access the administrator page, ZAZ Rent-A-Car provides security access level

for authorized administrator only. The three levels of the authorized users are

clerk, supervisor and the administrator.

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter provides the literature review that is related to the project

development. It reviews about the existence of other systems. The sources are

merely taken from books, articles, journals and also sources from Internet.

2.2 Web-based System

Web-based system understands as server components of distributed applications

which use the HTTP protocol to exchange data between servers and clients

(browser). By this definition, the principal problem of Web-based system

development becomes apparent.

From business perspectives. Web-based systems can be classified as

follows (Kaiser, 2000):

i. Business platform

For e-economy business models like electronic auctions or process

portals, certain Web-based systems become the backbone of their

operations.

li. Sales and purchase channel

For traditional business models like mail-order resellers, banks,

insurance companies, or producing industries, certain Web-based

systems are used to support an additional sales and / or purchasing

6

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

channel (e-commerce), vMle other channels and basic operations

are supported by traditional systems.

iiL Self-service

In any business, certain Web-based systems can be deployed

internally to decentralize selected support processes.

iv. Information management

In any business, certain Web-based systems sufyport creation,

integration, analysis, and distribution of information, particularly

for supporting management processes.

Web-based applications are distributed systems that can be accessed using a Web

browser (Rezazadeh and Butler, n.d.). During recent years the extent and scope of

their use has grown rapidly, significantly affecting all aspects of our lives.

Industries such as manufacturing, travel and hospitality, banking, education, and

government are Web-enabled to improve and enhance their operations. E-

commerce has expanded quickly, cutting across national boundaries. Even

traditional legacy systems have migrated to the Web. The scope and complexity

of current Web applications varies widely: from small-scale, short-lived services

to large-scale enterprise applications distributed across the Internet and corporate

intranets and extranets. Although numerous Web-based systems are in use now

and many of us rely on them, the manner in which they are developed raises

serious concerns. They need to be reliable and perform well. To build such

systems, Web-based system developers need a sound methodology, a disciplined

process and a set of good guidelines. Due to the high mnount of new demands,

Web applications are evolving continually and the complexity of these systems is

increasing rapidly. Therefore the use of a rigorous method becomes more

important.

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

There are several important characteristics for web-based applications, which can

be characterized from both the user and the system side: (Tian, 2003)

i. User-focus and massive user population (user side)

Web users are the focal point of all web applications, from traditional

services such as information search and retrieval, to newer applications

such as e-commerce and web-based computing. The user population is

extremely large and continuously growing, quite unprecedented as

compared to the user population of traditional computer and softv«ire

systems.

ii. High complexity system (system side)

The pervasive nature of the web, its overall large size, distributed

resources, and multi-layered structure, all contribute to the extremely high

complexity of \wb-based systems and applications.

2 J Data matching

Data matching is the computerized comparison of two or more sets of records

which relate to the same individual (Rogerson, 1997). It is primarily used as a

method for combating fraud. There is increasing use of data matching by both

public and private organizations in an attempt to reduce fraudulent activity which

has been estimated to run annually into billions of pounds in the UK. The relative

cheapness and availability of sophisticated processing means that data matching is

likely to increase even more rapidly. There are a number of examples of data

matching being undertaken by government agencies. The DSS has estabhshed a

Housing Benefit Matching Service aimed at detecting benefit fraud. The Audit

Commission uses data matching across local authorities regarding benefit claims,

education awards and activities of local authority employees. The Social Security

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

Administration (Fraud) Bill provides for wider sharing by central and local

government and the Post Office for fraud prevention or detection purposes.

There is a difference between the methods of ftaud detection used in the

past and data matching. Traditional investigation is triggered by some evidence of

a wrong doing by an individual, such as tax evasion or bogus benefit claims. Data

matching is not targeted at individuals but at entire categories of people. It is

initiated not by the suspicion concerning an individual but because the profile of a

particular group is of interest. This leads to three issues of concern.

Based on Cook (2003), data matching is the process of linking information about

the same (or similar) members of two or more imit record data sets, usually on tfie

basis of information held in common, to produce a further (matched) unit record

data set.

There are different types of Data Matching and Data Linking (Cook, 2003)

i. Exact Matching

In exact matching a match is made w^ere there is complete agreement

between key variables such as National Insurance Number. The proportion

of data that will be matched by exact matching will depend directly upon

the quality of the base statistical sources, in many cases it may be

desirable to combine exact and probability matching.

ii. Judgmental matching

Judgmental matching is done where there is not exact agreement between

key variables, but clerical or computer examination enable;s a possible

match to be made. This may be computer aided or assisted by computer

printouts.

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

iii. Probability Matching

Probability matching enables matches to be made where there are small

discrepancies in the data say as the result of a misspelt name or error in

date of birth. During probability matching both statistical sources is

grouped using one or more blocking variables such as postcode. Specific

key variables from each record in the statistical sources are then

compared, weights are allocated depending on the level of agreement and

these are totaled to produce an indication of the overall level of

concordance. Matches are then made by comparing the highest total

weight to a specified threshold.

iv. Statistical Matching

With Statistical Matching the matching of similar rather than identical

units is not only acceptable but is expected. Statistical Matching is

therefore frequently used where the base statistical sources have few or no

common records, making the matching of identical records impossible for

the majority of the data. Statistical Matches are made of the basis of

similarity of characteristics rather than uniquely identifying information as

with exact and probability matching. Given that Statistical Matching is a

form of imputing information about data subjects onto a statistical source

containing base data on those data subjects, it raise no issues for this

protocol.

v. Data Linking

Data linking is the creation of associations between data held in two or

more different statistical sources. The associations may allow access to

10

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

another statistical source or may be used for simultaneous updating. The

association is removed once the statistical reason for its creation ceased to

exist. Data linking does not result in a matched statistical source and there

are no additional issues raised for this protocol provided that the two base

statistical sources continue to be secured separately.

The term data matching covers two related but distinct functions of computerized

databases. One is the comparison of a given individual's details (e.g. on an

application form) with one or more databases (e.g. to check that the address

supplied is valid). The other is to perform a 'side-by-side' comparison of two or

more (large) databases, to detect trends, anomalies, potential duplicates, etc. In

practice, data matching is achieved in three main ways - data sharing, data

matching agents and data bureaux (Anon, 1997).

2.4 Car Rental Industry

Using Web Services, Dollar Rent A Car created an interlace to expose its existing

mainframe-based reservation system for access by existing and potential business

partners. So far, this capability has resulted in millions of additional rate requests,

thousands of new reservations, millions of dollars in additional revenue and

significant transaction fee savings (Rubin, 2002).

Through deep industry expertise, an extensive portfolio of interrelated services,

and cost-effective global delivery, Perot Systems provides application and IT

solutions that help businesses in the car rental industry control costs, optimize

efficiency, increase customer satisfaction, and accelerate growth. The proven

methodologies, adherence to best practices, and stringent quality management

systems ensure world class quality and reliability. And by leveraging our global

delivery capabilities, they ensure that solutions are delivered on time and within

budget.

11

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

For businesses in the car rental industry, advances in technology create great

opportunities. Increasingly cost-effective, reliable technologies for voice and data

exchange drive the growth of web-based sales channels and IP-based call centers,

enabling travelers to rent vehicles anytime and fi-om virtually anywhere (Anon,

2005).

Yet at the same time, cost and competition create significant challenges.

Escalating fleet maintenance costs and declining residual values, combined with

growing competition, cut profit margins increasingly thin. For car rental

companies, controlling costs and optimizing efficiencies while leveraging

technology to meet customer demands are the keys to competitive advantage.

2.5 Conclusion

In conclusion, this chapter views other studies on the topic itself It is important in

order to define the Web Based system. This chapter also describes the vv«b-based

system development, data matching technique and the car rental industry that used

in this research.

12

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH APPROACHES AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This chapter provides the method and approach vsdiich have been used for the

system development. A detailed explanation of each phase in developing this

project will be discussed.

A methodology is important for managing and controlling a research

in order to achieve the specified objectives within a given time. In order to

complete this research, there are five major phases involved.

Each phase involved in this project have significance in achieviag the

objectives of the project. This project begins with knowledge acquisition

phase and finished with the documentation of result. As mentioned in the

objective of this project, data matching technique is applied to provide car

recommendation service to the users.

13

COPYRIGHT © UiTM

Knowledge Acquisition

Design

Implementation

Testing

I Documentation

Study and Research

Data Collection

Design the prototype interface and database

System Architecture

Coding and Prototyping using PHP

Develop data matching technique

Testing prototype

Associate information about car reservation

problems

Observation & Internet reading

User Interlace & Database

Inference Engine

Database

Prototype

A set of recommended car

Result Analysis

Final report

Figure 3.1 Methodology and Research Approach Diagram

14

COPYRIGHT © UiTM